Celebratory Insurgency. The Art of Peripheral City-Making

Urban peripheries across Latin America have witnessed an explosion of cultural initiatives led by the youth born and raised in the neighborhoods built by their parents. This phenomenon is both insurgent, in its creation of uncharted opportunities for peripheral residents to thrive, and celebratory of the periphery as a site of creativity. Celebratory insurgent processes across the region play a central role in everyday life on the urban margins. However, within urban studies scholarship, which has explored the political and cultural implications of peripheral art, there remains a paucity of studies on the social and material dynamics through which specific cultural initiatives shape specific neighborhoods, especially in smaller cities in Latin America. Through the story of Santa Cecilia—a community-led music school situated in a settlement in southern Mexico’s Oaxaca called Vicente Guerrero—this dissertation studies peripheral artistic initiatives in Latin America as integral components of a larger cultural infrastructure that is essential to cope with social and material stigmatization on the peripheries, which residents have built by themselves. By means of a tinkering ethnography that took me to observe and participate in the daily functioning of Santa Cecilia in 2021 and 2023, this dissertation reconstructs the history of the music school and analyzes its relevance for the social and material constitution of Vicente Guerrero. After putting my ethnographic evidence in dialogue with scholarship in urban studies, performance studies, development studies, political theory, and planning theory, I find that arts-based processes of peripheral city-making like the one displayed by Santa Cecilia resemble musical performances that bring together a great variety of participants from around the world who feel compelled to collaborate in cultural experiences that enrich peripheral urban life. I argue that these aesthetically driven city-making performances create prefigurative enclaves between the urban, cultural, and political worlds where we grew up and the liberatory ones we desire. This dissertation examines how celebratory insurgent infrastructures like Santa Cecilia can teach us—professional and self-taught planners, artists, and scholars—how to creatively listen across cities, academic fields, and artistic experiences in our shared and ever-unfinished pursuit of fairer (urban) futures for all.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D., City and Regional Planning

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctor of Philosophy

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

City and Regional Planning

Grantor

Cornell University

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Moya-Latorre, Antonio

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Forester, John
• Makki, Fouad
• Roberts, Kenneth

• Community weaving
• Cultural infrastructure
• Nested peripheries
• Peripheral art
• Peripheral urbanization
• Tinkering ethnography

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7298/pkw4-v585

Dc Identifier Other

ProQuest Submission ID: 14357
ProQuest Publication ID: 31328152

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/116533